Tag: Renaissance Art

A new Medieval and Renaissance Reading Group is being set up at the Univeristy of Melbourne, see below for more detail. A proposal is being considered to form a reading group at the University of Melbourne to discuss medieval and early modern art and art history, with the working title the “MedRen Art Forum”. If you are a graduate student, scholar, art history graduate, or simply have an interest in this area, we would be interested in meeting with you. The forum will be open to all. Please come along to our first general meeting to share your thoughts about possible activities, readings, formats: Thursday, 1 June 2017 5.30-6.15 pm University of Melbourne, Medley building, room W202 Medley is building number 191 on campus maps, easily accessed through University Gate 10 on Grattan Street. If you have any queries please…

General Editors: Christopher Celenza; Samuel Cohn, Jr.; Andrea Gamberini; Geraldine Johnson; and Isabella Lazzarini. This series investigates the Renaissance as a complex intersection of political and cultural processes that radiated across Italian territories into wider worlds of influence, not only through Western Europe, but into the Middle East, parts of Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It will be alive to the best writing of a transnational and comparative nature and will cross canonical chronological divides of the Central Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. The series intends to spark new ideas and encourage debate on the meanings, extent and influence of the Renaissance within the broader European world. It encourages engagement by scholars across disciplines — history, literature, art history, musicology, and possibly the social sciences — and focuses on ideas and collective mentalities as social,…

In this lecture Professor Nagel will present his recent research on ideas of Asia and America in Renaissance Europe. The decades after 1492 brought Asia closer to Europe than it had ever been. The art, cartography, and literature of the period we call the High Renaissance expanded to imagine a new convergence of worlds where East rejoined West and New neighboured Old. Alexander Nagel is Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City. His research is focused on early-modern Italy, but he is also engaged with Modernist and contemporary art. His most recent books include Medieval Modern (2012), The Controversy of Renaissance Art (2011), and, with Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (2010). He is a contributor to both Cabinet magazine and the London Review of Books, and recent essays and debates have appeared in Artforum,…

Professor Alexander Nagel from New York University is giving a lecture and a special research workshop in Sydney next week. Lecture | The Renaissance Elsewhere 10 March, 2016, 6-7.30pm Co-presented by the Power Institute and Sydney Ideas Italian art in the period between ca. 1300 and ca. 1500 – what is called the Renaissance – is characterized by its extraordinary openness to the world. The Renaissance represented items and ideas not only in direct proximity to artists of the time, but also distant peoples and places known to artists only through textual accounts, oral reports, drawings, imported objects and other images. Western Christian art was oriented elsewhere due to its unique position at a distinct remove from the origins of its religion, and far to the west of the centres of culture as Latin Christians understood it. It is difficult…

Professor Patricia Simons will also be presenting her lecture on Susannah and the Elders at the University of Sydney. See the information for her Melbourne lecture here. 21 March, 2016, 6-7.30pm Jacopo Tintoretto’s ‘Susanna and the Elders’ is commonly read as a case of male voyeurism, in subject and purpose, or as mere moralizing allegory. This lecture moves away from each reductive extreme by re-examining the story’s history and visual effect. Patricia Simons is Professor of Art History, University of Michigan. Her field of study includes the art of Renaissance Europe (primarily Italy, France and the Netherlands) with a special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality. This is a free public lecture open to all with online registrations required. Register on the University of Sydney website. Venue: Mills Lecture Theatre 209, RC Mills Building, the University of Sydney Contact: Ira…

‘Susanna and the Elders’ is commonly read as a case of male voyeurism, in subject and purpose, or as mere moralizing allegory. This lecture moves away from each reductive extreme by re-examining the story’s history and visual effect. Professor Patricia Simons is Professor of Art History, University of Michigan. Her field of study includes the art of Renaissance Europe (primarily Italy, France and the Netherlands) with a special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality Date: Wednesday 9th March, 5:30–6:45PM Venue: Theatre 1, Alan Gilbert Building, University of Melbourne Free to attend. Registrations can be made on the university website.

News, Writing and Reviews on Art and Art History Katrina Grant Ron Radford, director of the National Gallery of Australia, has announced his plans to retire. He will step down from the role in September. He has been director since 2005. More here. An article in The Guardian about the work of Heather Dalton from the University of Melbourne that proposes that there is a sulphur-crested cockatoo in Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria (1496). I think I am keeping my sceptical hat on for this one – though I am intrigued and would like to read the full research. One commenter on The Guardian seems to have solved it though saying – “All this proves, is that the Italian cockatoo is extinct.” The NGV has announced it will be holding an NGV triennial for contemporary art and design. Tony Ellwood said, “Melbourne…

Charting Cultural Transformation through Renaissance Preaching Associate Professor Peter Howard from Monash University How did the artists of the Sistine Chapel wall frescoes develop and execute a complex programme in an amazingly short period of time? How do we explain the configuration of public space in early Renaissance Italy? Who authorised the magnificent display that characterises Renaissance Florence? These are just some of the questions on which light is shed if an expansive role is assigned to preaching in late medieval and early Renaissance Italy. This argument is a reversal of the image of the mendicant “penitential preachers” that Burckhardt constructed a century and a half ago but that still prevails, even among some scholars. Most commonly, the historiography identifies the humanists as the innovators of the day and as the disseminators of a renewed classical culture. This can…

Ferrarese Metamorphoses: sixteenth-century artistic transformations Dr Arvi Wattel, University of Western Australia The artistic output of the Ferrarese painter Dosso Dossi’s decreased markedly after the death of his main employer, Duke Alfonso I. This reduction has long attracted comment, starting with Vasari, who suggested that Dosso had been able to retire in his old age as he enjoyed a pension provided by the Este duke. More recently, the decline in Dosso’s production has been credited to a change of taste at the court of Alfonso’s son, Ercole II, who apparently tended towards the classical as exemplified in the work of Giulio Romano at the neighbouring court of Mantua. This talk will focus on the often cited “paradigm shift” in Ferrarese art in the era of Alfonso I and Ercole II, touching upon contemporary debates of imitation and art vs. nature. Date: Thursday 22 August…

Update: The NGV has advised that this lecture is now free to attend, for full details see the previous post here Varieties of Venetian Colour: Titian and Veronese Professor Paul Hills, The Courtauld Institute of Art Venetian painters of the Renaissance are celebrated above all others for their colour and for their handling of the medium of oil paint. This lecture explores how Titian embodied this aesthetic both in his religious images and in his mythological nudes. Typically his corporeal colour engages the sense of touch as well as sight. The younger master Paolo Veronese responded to Titian’s colorism but also departed from it. The son of stonecutter from Verona, he responded to the new fashion for whiteness in the architecture of Palladio. I will argue that shifts in colour preference in sixteenth-century Venice may be related to changes in…

Possessions and sacred signs in the art of Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556) Paul Hills, Courtauld Institute of Art Active in northern Italy in a period when the function of sacred images was challenged by reformers, Lorenzo Lotto (c.1480-1556/7) was a painter who was inventive in recasting religious imagery. This lecture will argue that Lotto’s career sheds a vivid light on the shifting relation between authorship, ownership and devotion in Early Modern Italy. Moving between religious subjects and portraiture, Lotto suggests an enfolding of the self within the dwelling place of garments. All manner of textiles, including fashionable clothes and furnishings, are displayed as tokens personal possession, yet at the same time Lorenzo Lotto discovers domestic equivalents ­– in towels, handkerchiefs, and shawls ­– for the vestments of religious ritual. Paul Hills studied the History of Art at the University of Cambridge…

The Power institute is proud to present in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute, Sydney, the forthcoming free symposium titled ‘Of Loves and Ladies, Knights and Arms’: The Renaissance Effect.

When we think of Renaissance art, we may think of individual examples of great painting and sculpture, but these works were often planned within complex decorative ensembles.

The Italian Renaissance in Australia – a tribute to Villa I Tatti This public and free event brings together for the first time Australian scholars who have, over the previous years, held fellowships at the prestigious Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of this extraordinary institution and these scholars wish to pay tribute to the contribution it has made to their research by presenting their own work as well as that of some of their American I Tatti colleagues. The event begins on the afternoon of Thursday 19 July with a seminar by two American scholars and former Tattiani, Elizabeth Horodowich and Timothy McCall, who will discuss their latest research. That evening there will be a talk by internationally renowned Harvard scholar and head librarian at Villa I Tatti,…

Call for Papers The 59th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America 4–6 April 2013, San Diego Call for Papers: Submission Deadline: 15 June 2012 The Program Committee welcomes submissions for individual papers or panels on any aspect of Renaissance studies, or the era ca. 1300–1650. You need not be a member of RSA to submit a proposal, but if your paper is accepted you must become a member and register for the conference. Proposals will be evaluated by the Program Committee for their original scholarly contribution to an aspect of the field. For full details on how to submit a paper see the RSA San Diego webpage General principles 1. Each proposed paper must include: author’s name, email, and affiliation; paper title; abstract (150-word maximum); keywords; and a one-page curriculum vitae. 2. Proposals may be submitted by individual scholars, by…

The People’s Doge: The Cultural Milieu of the Grand Chancellors of Venice Professor Deborah Howard, The University of Cambridge and Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne This lecture explores the cultural significance of the Grand Chancellors of Venice in the age of Titian. The Grand Chancellor was the head of the chancery, or professional civil service, in the Doge’s Palace – the one occupation strictly reserved for members of the cittadino class. Yet surprisingly, unconventional family set-ups were no embarrassment, because success as a cittadino rested on individual merit rather than pure lineage. Educated, wealthy and ambitious, these high-ranking figures in the Venetian Republic used art and architecture ostentatiously for their personal self-advancement . Professor Howard is Professor of Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art and a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. A graduate of Cambridge…